Functional coatings are cost-effective means to protect substrates from wear, corrosion, erosion, tribocorrosion, high temperature and high pressure in extreme environmental conditions. These are primarily manufactured through metal/ceramic powder deposition in a subsequent layer by layer fashion on the substrate materials. In all cases, the functional coatings need to be reliable for the intended application. The emerging techniques in 3D printing/additive manufacturing can be utilized to develop high-performance functional coatings. These methods provide geometrical precision, flexibility in geometrical complexity, customization of the coating layers, and reduce the raw materials waste, keeping the manufacturing cost low while addressing many of the technical barriers of conventional coating methods. With the rapid development of cutting-edge value-added technologies in aerospace, nuclear, military, space, and energy industry, 3D printing/additive manufacturing techniques will be major advantages. Novel functional coatings and 3D printing/additive manufacturing techniques will be critical to value-added components in the future development of technologies. The book provide an overview of the recent development in coating manufacturing techniques and potential to use in high-end engineering applications.
Tribological interaction between two contacting surfaces is influenced by many factors such as relative motion, normal load, environment, and lubrication apart from surface characteristics of the mating surfaces. Though surface characteristics such as roughness was dealt by many researchers for decades, the other important characteristic of surfaces, surface topography, has not got its share of attention. In the present investigation, basic studies were conducted using Inclined Scratch Tester to understand the role of surface topography on friction and transfer layer formation. A tribological couple made of copper pin against EN8 flat was used in the tests. Two surface parameters of steel flats — roughness and texture — were varied in tests. Care was taken to ensure that the surface roughness, measured along the scratch direction, had similar values for different textures, namely Unidirectional, 8-ground, and Random. It was observed that the transfer layer formation and the coefficient of friction along with its two components, namely adhesion and plowing, are controlled by the nature of surfaces and are independent of surface roughness. The plowing component of friction was highest for the surface that promotes plane strain conditions near the surface and was lowest for the surface that promotes plane stress conditions near the surface.
Abstract Conventional lubricants face significant challenges in electric vehicle (EV) systems due to their low electrical conductivity and inability to mitigate tribo-electrification effects which can result in increased friction, wear, and electrical discharge damage under external electrification. Consequently, conductive lubricants like ionic liquids (ILs) have emerged as promising alternatives, offering enhanced compatibility with EV applications. This study investigated the tribological behavior of four phosphonium-based room-temperature ionic liquids (PRTILs) with trihexyltetradecyl phosphonium [P6,6,6,14] or tributyltetradecyl phosphonium [P4,4,4,14] cations and saccharinate [Sacc] or benzoate [Benz] anions under electrified conditions, targeting potential EV applications. Physicochemical properties, including viscosity and ionic conductivity, were measured using a viscometer and a conductivity meter, while tribological properties were evaluated using an electrified mini-traction machine (MTM) and an electrified rotary ball-on-disk setup. The results revealed that all the PRTILs exhibited superior tribological (friction and wear) performance than mineral oil with or without electrification. PRTILs with the [Sacc] anion feature a double aromatic ring structure, while those with the [Benz] anion feature a single aromatic ring structure. Under low electrification (10 mA), [P6,6,6,14][Sacc] outperformed [Benz]-based PRTILs, showing lower COF and wear due to their higher viscosity and lower ionic conductivity. Additionally, [P6,6,6,14][Sacc] showed a power loss lower than [P4,4,4,14][Sacc] but higher than [Benz]-based PRTILs under tribo-electrification. The addition of graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) reduced the power loss of [P6,6,6,14][Sacc] by 24% by reducing the electric contact resistance. Overall, double-ring aromatic [P6,6,6,14][Sacc] demonstrated superior tribological performance, and GNP additives enhanced their power efficiency, offering a promising pathway for IL-based lubricant development for electrified conditions.
Surface topography of harder mating surface plays an important role in metal forming operations as it predominantly controls the frictional behavior at the interface. In the present investigation, an inclined scratch tester was used to understand the effect of direction of surface grinding marks on interface friction and transfer layer formation. EN8 steel flats were ground to attain different surface roughnesses with unidirectional grinding marks. Al–Mg alloy pins were then scratched against the prepared EN8 steel flats. The grinding angle (angle between direction of scratch and grinding marks) was varied between 0 deg and 90 deg during the scratch tests. Scanning electron micrography of the contact surfaces revealed the transfer layer morphology. The coefficient of friction and transfer layer formation were observed to depend primarily on the direction of grinding marks of the harder mating surface, and independent of the surface roughness of harder mating surface. The grinding angle effect was attributed to the variation of plowing component of friction with grinding angle.
Ceramics are widely evaluated for their extreme hardness, high-temperature stability, and corrosion resistance, which enable applications in harsh service environments. However, these same properties, high melting points, brittleness, and low thermal shock resistance, make conventional manufacturing of complex ceramic components difficult and expensive. Traditional processes often require costly diamond tooling or energy-intensive sintering and tend to produce only simple geometries, with significant waste material and risk of defects. Additive manufacturing (AM) has recently emerged as a promising route to fabricate intricate, near-net-shape ceramic parts without these drawbacks. By building components layer by layer, AM reduces the need for extensive machining and enables the fabrication of geometrically complex, near-net-shape ceramic structures with reduced material waste, although challenges such as porosity, interlayer defects, and cracking during post-processing remain. Nonetheless, ceramic AM technologies lag behind their metal and polymer counterparts, and significant challenges remain in achieving fully dense parts with reliable mechanical properties. This review provides an in-depth overview of the state of the art in ceramics and ceramic composite additive manufacturing. We detail the most widely used AM processes (stereolithography, binder jetting, material extrusion, powder bed fusion, inkjet printing, and direct energy deposition) and typical feedstock formulations for each technique. We examine the resulting mechanical properties (strength, toughness, hardness, wear resistance) and functional properties (thermal stability, dielectric behavior, biocompatibility) of additively manufactured ceramics, and discuss their current and potential engineering applications in the aerospace, defense, automotive, biomedical, and energy sectors. Persistent challenges, including porosity, shrinkage and cracking during sintering, achieving uniform microstructures, high process costs, and scalability issues, are analyzed, and we highlight promising future directions such as multi-material grading, integration of machine learning for process optimization, and sustainable manufacturing approaches. Despite significant progress, challenges remain in achieving fully dense structures, improving process reliability, and scaling ceramic AM for industrial applications, highlighting the need for further research in process optimization, material design, and multi-material integration.
Slip and fall accidents are a major occupational health concern. Important factors affecting shoe-floor friction is critical to identifying and resolving unsafe surfaces and designing. Experimental studies have indicated that several factors including floor roughness, sliding speed and shoe materials affect shoe-floor friction although the precise nature of the mechanism behind this phenomenon is not well understood. In addition, recent studies have suggested that boundary lubrication is highly relevant to slipping and that adhesion and hysteresis are the main contributing factors to boundary lubrication. The purpose of this study is to perform the numerical simulations to analyze the effects of floor roughness (asperity height), sliding speed and material properties on ratio of real area of contact and normal force (relevant to adhesion friction) and hysteresis friction for a viscoelastic shoe material interacting with a hard floor surface. A 3D shoe model and 3D vinyl floor model was simulated with speed 0.01 m/s, 0.5 m/s, 0.75 m/s and 1 m/s in three different floor surfaces. The material property was also varied in the numerical simulations. The study showed that roughness affects both the hysteresis and adhesion friction whereas sliding speed and material property affects the adhesion friction only. The dependence of adhesion and hysteresis friction on roughness, sliding speed and material property is useful in understanding the shoe-floor friction phenomenon and development of slip resistant sports and work shoes.
The present study deals with the tribological behavior of nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) coatings at high temperature sliding conditions. The NCD coatings were grown by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method on the hard metal (WC-Co) substrates. The friction and wear tests were performed on ball-on-disc tribometer using a high-temperature chamber with rotary drive. The tests were carried out at room temperature, 300, 450 and 600 °C. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical microscopy, mechanical profilometry and Raman spectrometry were used for investigation of the morphology and chemical composition of the wear scars and pristine surface. The depth and width of the wear scars measured after the high temperature sliding tests are larger in comparison with room temperature tests. It was observed that the coefficient of friction (COF) increased with increasing temperature. The wear rate of NCD coatings tested at 300-450° C was about 10 times higher than that at room temperature. The mechanisms involved for these variations are discussed.
